Day of the Triffids, 1962: special effects are likely to have improved since then

Ever since Survivors started, I keep having this recurring nightmare that I survive a flu pandemic only to be bossed around by Julie Graham. It's absolutely terrifying. My sleepless nights are not being helped by news that the BBC is remaking The Day of the Triffids. Again. This will be the eighth BBC production of the story and while casting "has yet to be confirmed", I'll put money right now now on David Tennant, Rupert Penry Jones - or possibly Julie Graham - playing the new Dr Bill/Billie Masen.

The good news is that Patrick Harbinson, who wrote the screenplay for Val McDermid's Place of Execution on ITV, is adapting Wyndham's novel and it's only a two-parter. That's about the sum of it though and doesn't really stop the disheartening feeling that it's being remade at all – and not just because it's a co-production with the geniuses behind ITV1's Flood. No, it's more that this is yet another example of BBC drama's obsession with brand recognition. This fixation, I believe, is based on a growing fear that audiences won't come to a drama unless it's a remake or based on a book or both. In part, this fear is born from the increasing primacy of marketing concerns in the drama commissioning process and the mania with hitting target demographics, but also on a belief that the audience is lazy or stupid or timid, not to mention commissioners' own lack of faith in their ability to spot a good original idea.

Now you could say that there's nothing wrong with adaptations or even remakes. Moreover, original ideas aren't necessarily good ones. You only need to look at Bonekickers and Phoo Action to see that. But in both those cases, you can imagine the decision-making process that got them commissioned. In Bonekickers' case, it was likely "The makers of Life on Mars can do no wrong" and in Phoo Action's case, it was "Get me Jaime Winston on BBC3". And let's not get started on the excruciating Apparitions, the latest vehicle, in a long BBC motorcade, for Martin Shaw. Each demonstrates a certain absence of imagination.

But this lack of vision is compounded by an increasing reliance on the remake. Judging from the standard of Survivors, the thinking seems to be that you don't have to try hard to make a remake good: making and marketing it like crazy is enough. The scripts in Survivors are dreadful, the characters cartoonish and the premise oddly irrelevant. It reeks of laziness. That a bit of brand recognition and razzy marketing compensate for poor execution of an idea is shown to be nonsense. Do you really think that all the money that BBC spent on Survivors – and they spent a heap, including on re-shoots – was money well-spent? Will the idea that the Survivors brand has "traction" with viewers really been borne out? I don't think it will.

Timidity and/or witlessness in commissioning, an over-reliance on market research and marketing mania: all conspire at a particularly bad time for drama, especially at the BBC. BBC1's returning series that bring in good ratings are all over five years old – Waking the Dead's next series will be its eighth, ditto with Spooks - and rumour has it that New Tricks is on its last legs because it's so expensive (due to the talent involved) and there's little will at the BBC to keep it. In the current economic climate, with budgets being squeezed, you get the feeling that commissioners are going to get more risk-averse rather than less. So while my Survivors-based nightmare is scary, staring into the future of drama is more worrying still.